Chapter 4 – The Nightie
One month had passed since the fire at the cremation ground.
The flat in Madurai had changed shape around the absence. Relatives stopped coming after the thirteenth-day rites. Neighbours still left steel dabbas of food at the door that no one finished. Selvam went to the bank most days, but the clean-shaven, steady man who used to walk in with his helmet under one arm had thinned and roughened. He came home later each evening, the smell of cheap brandy already on him, and sat in the bedroom with the bottle. Some nights he did not speak at all. Some nights he talked to the empty side of the bed in a low, broken voice until the alcohol pulled him under.
Vivek stayed.
The first week he kept finding things that belonged to Vidya in stupid places.
A safety pin on the windowsill.
Her red hair clip under the sofa.
A grocery list stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a mango.
Once he found half a packet of tamarind powder in the kitchen and stood there staring at it for nearly a minute.
None of it mattered.
That was precisely why it hurt.
There was nowhere else. The Devipattinam house felt like a held breath. Here, at least, he could make sure Selvam ate a little rice in the morning and that the lights were switched off before dawn. He slept on the sofa, washed the clothes, swept the hall. The almirah in the bedroom still held Vidya’s things. No one had touched them. The pastel nighties, the cotton salwars, the faint talcum that rose whenever the door opened—everything waited exactly as she had left it.
On the thirty-first night the restlessness became too strong.
Selvam had come home after nine, already unsteady, and gone straight to the bedroom with a fresh bottle. The hall light was off. Only the small night lamp glowed under the bedroom door. Vivek sat on the sofa for a long time, staring at that thin line of light. Then he stood, walked quietly into the bedroom, and opened the almirah.
He chose one of the older nighties: pale peach cotton, neckline soft and slightly stretched from wear. It still held the ghost of her powder. He stripped in the dark corner near the wardrobe, folded his own clothes, and stepped into a pair of her plain panties. Then the nightie. It settled over him the way it always had—cool at first, then warming to the shape of his body. In the faint light from the night lamp he caught his reflection in the dressing-table mirror: spare shoulders, the gentle fall of cloth, hair longer now and falling near his cheeks. Priya looked back at him for the first time in a month.
He did not know why he walked toward the bed.
Or rather, he did. The need was his own. The empty house in Devipattinam, the quiet of this flat, the sound of Selvam’s breathing on the other side of the door—everything had narrowed to this single, dangerous step.
Selvam was half-sitting against the headboard, shirt open, the bottle loose in one hand. His eyes were glassy, fixed on nothing. When the soft sound of bare feet reached him he turned his head slowly. For a long second he only stared. Then something raw and desperate moved across his face.
“Vidya…”
The name came out rough, almost a question.
Priya stood still, heart beating so hard he felt it in his throat. He did not correct him. He did not speak. Selvam set the bottle on the side table with clumsy care and reached out. His hand found the hem of the nightie first, then the waist beneath it. The touch was unsteady, searching. He pulled gently and Priya let himself be drawn closer until he stood between Selvam’s knees.
Selvam’s other hand rose and cupped the back of his neck. The kiss that followed was clumsy and tasting of cheap spirit—open-mouthed, wet, full of the grief that had nowhere else to go. Selvam kissed like a man trying to prove someone was still alive. His tongue pushed past Priya’s lips, rough and demanding, while his fingers tightened in the longer hair. Priya’s own mouth opened under it. The kiss turned dirtier quickly—teeth grazing, breath shared, the wet sound of it loud in the quiet room. Selvam’s hand slid down the back of the nightie, found the curve of a hip, and squeezed hard enough to leave an ache.
“Missed you,” Selvam muttered against his mouth, the words thick. “Every night… missed you.”
He pulled again and Priya climbed onto the bed, the peach nightie riding up his thighs. Selvam’s hands moved under the cloth at once, roaming over the flat chest, the spare stomach, the sharp line of hip bones. There was no softness of breast, no familiar curve of waist, but the alcohol and the dim light and the desperate need seemed to blur the difference. Selvam only made a low, broken sound and kissed him again—deeper this time, tongue stroking, lips dragging, the kind of open, dirty kiss that left saliva at the corner of the mouth.
One of Selvam’s hands left the nightie and fumbled at the front of his own trousers. He freed himself with a rough motion, already hard, the thick length rising against his stomach. Then that same hand pushed the nightie higher, found the thin cotton panties, and slipped inside. Warm fingers closed around Priya’s cock.
Priya’s breath left him in a shaky rush.
Selvam stroked him the way a man strokes something he has missed for weeks—firm, a little too tight, thumb catching the slick head on every upward pull. The panties stretched around his wrist. The nightie was bunched under Priya’s arms now. Selvam kept kissing him through it, messy and open, murmuring Vidya’s name between kisses while his hand worked steadily. The dual sensation—rough palm, wet mouth—made Priya’s hips push forward. He stayed silent except for the small, helpless sounds that escaped when Selvam’s thumb pressed just under the head.
It did not take long.
Selvam’s fist tightened, twisted slightly on the upstroke, and Priya came with a muffled sound against the older man’s mouth—hot pulses spilling over Selvam’s fingers and onto the nightie. Selvam kept stroking him through it, slower now, spreading the wetness, still kissing him in that same dirty, open way as if he could drink the pleasure out of him. Only when Priya’s body jerked with the last aftershock did Selvam’s hand still.
For a moment they stayed like that—foreheads touching, breath mixing, Selvam’s wet fingers resting loosely around the softening cock. Then Selvam’s eyes drifted closed. The brandy and the release of something he had been carrying alone pulled him under. His hand fell away. Within a minute his breathing had deepened into the heavy, uneven sleep of the very drunk.
Priya stayed motionless on the bed for a long time, the peach nightie still pushed up, the cooling wetness on his stomach and on the borrowed cloth. Selvam’s face in the night-lamp glow looked younger, almost peaceful, the grief temporarily smoothed away. Carefully, Priya slipped free. A faint red mark already showed on his left hip where Selvam’s fingers had gripped too hard. He cleaned himself with a towel from the bathroom, folded the stained nightie as best he could, and left it in the corner of the almirah. Then he put his own clothes back on and returned to the sofa in the hall.
Outside, a late temple bell sounded once.
Inside the bedroom Selvam slept on. When morning came he would find a faint dampness on the sheet near his hip, a trace of talcum that did not belong to him, and a small, unexplained red mark on the pillowcase where someone’s cheek had rested. He would tell himself it had only been another dream of the wife he had lost. The explanation would almost hold.
Priya lay awake on the sofa until the sky lightened, the taste of cheap spirit still on his tongue, the ghost of that rough fist still wrapped around him, the bruise on his hip already darkening. He understood that something irreversible had begun. The alternative was the empty house and the sound of Selvam drinking alone. He already knew which one he would choose.
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